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Tuesday, 25 January 2011

My blog got 3 years old on the 21st without me noticing. On this occasion a big thank you for all my readers, I hope you enjoy the pictures and my writing when I get round these days to write something.

Saturday, 22 January 2011

The first day in Holyhead was all about hiking over the mountain all the way to the South Stack lighthouse to take pictures. After much deliberation I decided to take the GXR with 28mm A12 module but instead of taking the 50mm A12 module alongside I went for the GF1 with the 50mm Nokton lens to see how it fares when used for landscapes.
Both cameras did an excellent job and especially the Nokton realy impressed me when shooting wide open, you do get vignetting and soft corners but it gives a very unique look to the pictures and almost a tilt-shift effect. I took some of my best landscape shots out of this and especially the 3rd picture is my favorite from the trip but you do need to see it fullsize to spot the boat.

Thursday, 13 January 2011

I only had the Nokton for a week and did not even have that much time to go out and take pictures with it but I can't see myself going back to the 20mm Panasonic lens after using it.
The character of the Nokton is just so much better than the 20mm lens that it makes a huge difference for me. I guess it shows where optical quality comes in to play instead of just fixing stuff in software. The pictures are just not the same, no mater how much Panasonic and Olymous try to fix in software, it's not the sharpness nor the technical quality, it's the character that suffers and pictures look technically perfect but flat and boring with software corrected lenses.

Wednesday, 12 January 2011

The Nokton is a fantastic lens and gives a very film-like quality to pictures, especially if you set the camera to b&w. I just love the character of this lens and aside from my Leica f2.8 28mm R mount lens this is my favorite lens for the GF1 and shows that opptical quality beats software corrections anytime.
But not just the quality is fantastic also the bright aperture allows for very fast shutter speeds at low ISO even in very dark conditions.

The only problem is at times to nail the focus and although I did not do it in this picture I still like it best from today.

Sunday, 9 January 2011

Having a new lens is always great, each lens has it's own character and feel to it so it's almost like getting a new camera with each lens puchase.
The weather was great today and I decided to go for a walk around Greenwich to take some pictures and see how an f0.95 lens peforms wide open for street photography. I really like the feel of the lens and the smooth manual focus but struggle with the limited movement from 2m to infinity, especially when guessing the distance and not looking at the screen like in the last 3 pictures in this series.

I have decided to post a small series just to show what can be done on a first outing with this lens, aside from the first 2 pictures all were taken and focused from the hip without using the LCD screen but the last one has been heavily cropped.

Saturday, 8 January 2011

It was tempting to post some street shots or low light hots I took with the lens but after my complaint that the Nokton does not allow for enough finetuning of the focus between 2m and infinity while offering very good close up focusing abilities.
To test this, I decided to actually take a picture and it does indeed a very good job at it and allows for precise focusing. This picture is focused at the closest distance or 17cm.

Friday, 7 January 2011

As a nice new year's present I decided to get myself the Voigtländer Nokton f0.95 lens for m4/3, I found it for a very good price on Amazon.fr and could not resist. Amazon is excellent and very fast with the shipping so it meant I already got my lens last night but it was to late for some serious shooting.

Although it was busy in he office I did go out at lunch for some shooting and when I met with friends in the evening it was a perfect opportunity to really test the lens.
It is fantastic and allows for very fast shutter speeds at low ISO, something not possible with the other lenses but at the same time it has a much better quality and look.
While I like that it focuses very close and is almost usable as a macro lens (this is the lens Ricoh should have put on the 50mm A12 module), I am not at all happy with the little distance you can move the focus ring to go from 2m to infinity since it does not allow to be fast or precise and it does not have enough DOF that you don't have to care about accurate focus after 2m. Other than that it's a fantastic lens and feels really good although it is heavy.

So far I would say this is the best quality lens for m4/3, does not need software corrections, is built out of metal and has a proper MF ring around the lens.